Could clever meters spell the end for deafening TV ads?

If the noise of advertisements (ads) blaring out from your TV set has you reaching for the volume control, you may be surprised to learn that broadcasters are all but powerless to do anything about it. But now an international team of sound experts is aiming to give them various tools they need to make commercial breaks less noisy. Advertisers like to make their TV ads seem louder than various programmes they accompany, so they stand out. Broadcasters can already limit the peak sound level in commercials to match that of those programmes, but this does not really solve the problem because it's not the peak loudness that people find annoying, but the average loudness level over a period of time. Chris Hearn of the British independent broadcaster Granada TV in Manchester, England, says that limits for the peak sound level for material in which the sound is compressed in this way is normally set at a lower level than for a drama with a full dynamic range. Electro-mechanical sound meters that display average loudness are not sophisticated enough to take into account the way the human ear perceives the sustained sound. But this is set to change. Prompted by complaints from viewers, the International Telecommunication Union, which sets standards for the broadcasting industry, is developing a metering system that marries people's subjective perception of loudness with electro-mechanical measurement.